Nannies, step aside. Here come the “mannies.”

New service Mannies of Los Angeles recently launched to place male nannies with families who prefer to have men help raise their children.

The Palms referral agency – the first in Los Angeles devoted to male nannies and one of only a handful in the nation – is the brainchild of Michael Lin, a kindergarten teacher at Willows Community School in Culver City.

“Parents kept asking me if I could do things for their children,” said Lin, 30. “And they were telling me there were not enough male role models to take care of kids at the early elementary stage. The vast majority of the teachers and caretakers were all females.”

Seeing an opportunity, he set up a home office in the fall and started looking for male nannies to place with some of those families. Lin said he now has about 50 participating mannies.

He has kept up his teaching job, and spends evenings and weekends working on the referral service. His modest goal is to place one manny a month during his first year in business, and he said he’s ahead of that pace.

Most clients, Lin said, are two-parent families where the husband is away for long stretches on assignment.

So far, the service only places daytime mannies, but Lin said that could change.

“No live-in mannies – so far,” he said. “I have had a couple queries about this.”

– Howard Fine